


Claire Williams: Outsider

by oesterheld



Series: D&D Character Backstories [5]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: D&D, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons Character Backstory, F/F, F/M, No Dungeons & Dragons Knowledge Required
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23414764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oesterheld/pseuds/oesterheld
Summary: Dungeons & Dragons character backstory. Bear is a chaotic good mutant close range fighter.
Series: D&D Character Backstories [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684225





	Claire Williams: Outsider

On a dark day in December, a girl was born in the wasteland. She was twice the size of a normal baby and had fur growing out of her left shoulder. Her skin was thick and resilient, and her teeth grew in sharper than they should have been. She was a mutant.

Left alone on the ground in that harsh environment, she was found on the brink of death by a passerby: a woman in her late 50's with a million scars and on top of them all, a warm smile. Heather Williams picked her up and brought her home, giving her food, shelter, care, and a name.

Claire Nora Williams.

From infancy, Heather trained Claire to know her body and to use it to her advantage. Most girls have the advantage of being pretty, or buying beauty. This wasn't an option for Claire. So she learned to fight, to take down any opponent. She whittled her mind into a sharp blade, undistracted in battle.

This meant Claire grew up an outsider in most conversations. She didn't fit in anywhere the other kids played, in the classroom, on the street. She was either too stupid and uncomprehending or too strong and capable. She had two friends growing up: Peony Diaz and Hide Murasaki. Peony was a sort of family friend; their relationship was mostly forced, and they didn't have much to do or talk about. They didn't relate to each other. Hide, though, was like her brother.

They met when she was four and he was five, in the courtyard of Heather's apartment complex. He lived in the same building. They grew up together, spending every moment of free time making each other laugh and doing dumb shit. Claire got them in trouble and Hide got them out of it. They were a perfect team.

But Claire still longed to be a part of something. Having Hide was good, it gave her somewhere she could fit in and not be judged for being who she was, but she still felt like an outsider. He was a human with a loyalist father, he couldn't relate.

One day, on a grocery run for Heather, Claire stumbled upon a fight in a back alley. It was more than that, though; there was a crowd cheering, money being thrown around and someone shouting over it all, relaying what was happening in the chaos. When the fight was over, the man who got beat stood up, brushed himself off, and shook hands with the woman who pummeled him, both of them sporting fierce grins. It was like Bear's vision cleared for the first time at fifteen years old; this is what she was born to do.

The next night, she returned to find the arena still there, still bursting with noise and bodily fluids and chaos. She stayed in the crowd for the first few visits, but inevitably, gravity pulled her in to fight. Her first fight was like a dream. She found herself in the middle of the circle of people, facing the woman she'd seen that first night. She was big, about six feet tall, but she was still young, and this woman had a streak to her name. That name was announced over the cheers and boos, but Claire didn't hear it. Her heart was beating into her throat, ears buzzing, cheeks turning ruddy with excitement. The noise stopped for just a moment, and she could see the man announcing looking at her. She processed his question: What's your name, big girl? She tried to say Claire and choked, looking at the scoreboard and seeing all the cool pseudonyms: Black Death, Red Robin Hood, Harlem. She heard someone in the crowd shout, She looks like she's gonna tear Fox to shreds, she's a monster! And Claire found her voice.

"My name is Bear!"

She won her first fight.

She got three special magnets implanted in her face to hold a mask in place while she fought. Her mask was crafted from scratch and remade regularly (it took many beatings) but it was the face of a fierce grizzly bear, peaceful but willing to kill.

Hide, loyalist trainee that he was, hated her newfound crowd. They argued about it and he tried so many times to get her to stop, but she always returned to the arena. Eventually, he dropped the topic altogether and simply helped her patch up when she needed it. As they got older, their paths in life diverged more and more, but they remained stuck to each other, pulled by the same gravity that pointed Bear to fighting. Hide was someone she was meant to know, to be close to.

Heather died when Bear was eighteen. She was old, and she'd gotten injured one too many times in her younger years. Her body simply fell apart. Bear was devastated, but Hide helped her through it, and she became stronger than ever. Heather would be proud.

Around the same time, Bear met Leon Diaz. He was Peony's older brother, but Bear had never met him because he didn't stay home too often. He liked to explore, meet new people, make new friends. The two clicked instantly and they spent a lot of time together. Hide was busy a lot with the job as a cop he'd secured when his father got kicked, so Bear hung out with Leon.

But he was sick. He had cancer due to the radioactivity of the wastelands, and he was slowly dying. When he asked Bear out, she didn't know what else to say but yes. She should like him like that, shouldn't she? He was handsome and charming and had an extensive skin routine. He cared about her and didn't judge her for who she was.

This lead her down a path of self discovery that left her confused and annoyed. Why didn't she like Leon in the way he liked her? Did she like someone else? Who can she picture herself liking? Marrying? She didn't like the answer. It didn't fit in her image of herself that she'd carefully curated. She was already abnormal physically, did she have to be weird on the inside, too?

She ignored it and gave Leon what he wanted. It wasn't like it was hurting anyone-- anyone but Bear, that is.

Everything carried on like clockwork until Bear's twenty-fourth birthday.

She was leaving the corner store with her energy drink and chips in hand when a man attacked her. She fought him, but he was quick and crazy, and he got in several good hits. He fought to the death, this man, and that's exactly what it came to. It wasn't Bear's first kill; some of the fights that went down in the circle she attended didn't have a happy ending. This was, though, the first person she's killed who didn't expressly sign up for it. He was some tweaker who wanted money or something, and she killed him for it. She didn't feel great about that.

But then she looked up from the man's crumbled body and at the end of the alley, backlit by the row of convenience stores, stood Hide Murasaki, in his cop uniform and all.

Bear had been surviving since birth. She was trained to know when to run and when to fight.

Bear ran harder than she'd ever run before.

As she ran, a flier blew into her face; she kept running. She ran until her lungs ached and her eyes stung. When she finally slowed down, her eyes were drawn to a sort of movie theater right in front of her. Under the title of the show, it read "FREE ADMISSION FOR MUTANTS!" Bear slipped inside and flashed her ID, blending into the darkness of the theater as she finally let her thoughts catch up to her.

Why did that man attack her? Did he want to kill her? Why didn't he ask for anything- money, drugs, booze?

What would Hide do to her when he found her?

She sat in a theater seat near the front and let the tears slip down her face as the show began.


End file.
